The manufacturer site has a flash image with a DOS executable. I've looked at appliers for other OS's but they don't like the contents, and the naming convention doesn't match what's documented, so I really must use the EXE in this specific package with the ROM image.

Is there an easy way to get a (Free)DOS prompt with UBCD and then just run this program? I mean, without locating tools to package the exe+datafile, tool to rebuild the superfloppy image, and figure out how to program a menu to get the command line just right without interactive trials. Can't I just, you know, run the file at a prompt?

It's been a while but the last time I did this, I copied the update program and firmware update to a USB drive or the on board hard drive and booted into freedos and ran it with no problems. If your system is BIOS it should work fine. If your system is UEFI all bets are off as I haven't worked on any of those yet.

Under Windows, use RUFUS to create a FreeDOS USB flash drive (not external HDD) using FAT32 (not NTFS nor any newer file system) with BIOS/MBR settings. It is recommended for the USB flash drive to be up to 4GB (smaller sizes are fine too). Try to avoid using bigger USB flash drives for BIOS updates (which in fact are "firmware" updates, as this particular mainboard is a UEFI system with CSM), because bigger sizes might present some issues with FAT file systems.

Then copy the whole set of files from your zip archive (which contains the BIOS update) to the root directory of the FAT32 partition of the USB flash drive. Boot your system with this newly-created USB flash drive and follow the instructions provided (which eventually involve executing not a ".exe" file but a ".bat" file with certain parameters.

Disclaimer: Anything you do, it is at your own risk and responsibility alone.

The Piney wrote:It's been a while but the last time I did this, I copied the update program and firmware update to a USB drive or the on board hard drive and booted into freedos and ran it with no problems. If your system is BIOS it should work fine. If your system is UEFI all bets are off as I haven't worked on any of those yet.

So the USB flash drive and HDDs were visible in the normal manner once booted into FreeDOS? That makes sense... I was thinking they were not, so that such things could be manipulated, but I guess you just don't have to use them for anything that can't be force-closed. DOS and USB? BIOS exposing it as a HDD I suppose, so it's at the mercy of the BIOS.

Re UEFI: my bios boot stuff is nuts, which is why I want to update it. Boot entries don't behave sanely or consistently. The previous copy of the motherboard, returned for other reasons, was fine with that so I'm hoping it's just the firmware.